I know people who can boot from a floppy and with vi rebuild/etc and get a machine going again. You can reinstall some.deb's or rpm's, or copy/etc from another machine and the tweek it.
I don't know of anyone alive who can rebuild the registry from scratch, Mirosoft does not even understand it well enough to be able to rebuild it.
That is not a good sign, when the people who make it, can not fix it.
Yeah right, I would rather walk a 70 year old lady through the registry removing 50 or 60 keys, with the potential to totally fubar her windows box, so Norton Antivirus can be reinstalled after a virus that Norton could not detect has infected her system and corrupted the antivirus as well.
I would just tremble at the thought of telling someone to type "kdesu kate" and having them browse to/etc and opeing up a file and make a chage with me.
I have had to tell a windows loser that they were out of luck if they could not come up with a boot disk so we could get back into their box in DOS mode and restore the registry, since they deleted HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software or some other such nonsence, even though I asked them, are you sure the key name you are on is "x"
I would bet the system comes with a linux CD you could boot from and walk someone through with VI, instead of some lame ass recovery CD, that only gives them the option of nuking and paving their current system without saving any of their data.
I actually look forward to the day of providing lunux support.
As long as you can crap out windows with one keystroke in regedit, Windows is just not ready for the desktop.
Since I am stooping to these references, lets add that running as root in linux will probably not mean more I-D-ten-T errors, since you will still have to mark a download as executable before it can bite you in the butt.
but it's been my experience (with a lot of installations) that Windows XP/2k really don't crash much, except for hardware/power problems, and weirdness with third party programs.
It all depends on what you do with it. Turn Joe Sixpack loose on a linux box, and 6 months from now we will still be surfing the web, writing documents, getting email and laughing at his friends who have viruses. However, he will be bitching about the fact that "CardShop" does not run on linux.
Meanwhile over in Windows Land, Joe sixpack can't even load the program because he has about 10% resources free because there are 30 items running in his tray...hmmm how did I get three copies of WeathreBug running? Not to mention spyware and mailware running in the background.
Yup, with the right hardware, and keeping Joes Sixpack off the internet and your windows box will run well. I just fear for the day when all the spyware gets ported to Linux and I have to clean that crap up for folks......
The goal a lot of people have is to make Linux mainstream, that means that less and less knowledgeable users will be using it. If Linux continues to suffer from kernel exploits from time to time just like Windows then those same users will be running executable mail viruses built for Linux just like they do for Windows now.
On a Windows box, there would have been no peer review. So instead of being discovered after 5 years, the only way we would know about it is if some hacker had reversed engineered it and exploited the problem. Then Microsoft would set on a patch for 6 months...if they decided to fix it at all.
In Linux, peer review found it, fixed it and made the information available, so you know that you have an exploit.
Linux seems much more Mainstream to me. Until people write perfect, bug free, secure software, give me a system that at least I can keep up to date and have a chance to protect myself.
Two years ago, you could say, "switch email programs, don't use outlook" and update your antivirus weekly.
Then you had to add to that, run Ad-Away to get rid of spyware.
Then about a year ago, malware is added to the spyware category, it got so bad, you have to run something like SpywareBlaster to keep the stuff from installing in the first place.
Then about 6 months ago, hijackware started doing it's thing, and you needed another set of tools to protect against that..
Six months to a year from now, there will be some new class of crap out there screwing up my customers machines, and the tools to repair/prevent it from happening do not even exist yet.
It is not like putting oil in a car. Unless you consider having an oil leak so you must constantly check.
Let's not even begin to talk Anti-Virus, I can not tell you how much fun it is to have a customer with an up-to-date copy Norton Antivirus. On Monday, the computer is a little sluggish, on Tuedsay, the speaker beeped randomly in the morning, they call me on Wednesday. Sure enough, it is a new virus.
Per Symantec (Norton) the virus delivered it's payload on Tuesday (the beeping) and Norton's definitions can repair/prevent this as of Wednesday. I.E. the day AFTER the payload is delivered. If the payload would have deleted files, it would have been a problem.
So even updating your Antivirus software may not be enough. Although I do have to admit, they should have known better than to open up that email attachment.....
In the OpenSource world, if something is broke by an upgrade, you have the source available and someone, someplace (paid or unpaid), can fix it, so you can compile it yourself.
PITA? Sure, but it is possilbe.
On the other hand, most software in the windows environment, is closed source, and if you relay on an app made by a company that went out of business, your are out of luck. If you don't want to pay for a bunch of upgrades, your out of luck. If the new version dropped some feature you rely upon, or forces you to rewrite hundreds of scripts, your out of luck.
So with open source, there is the potential that can compensate for software you run being made incompatible.
With Windows, hearing just hearing that some things may become incompatible means you know that if program (x) is borked, you have no way to continue running it, because it is possible you will have no access to source, or vendor you can fix it.
Well if you go on over to pcLinuxOnline TexStar has his own LiveCD of Mandrake 9.2. It can be installed to the Hard Drive and he has a package repository that uses apt-get.
Look I do work for people of average intelligence. They buy their new Dell, see that it has Norton Antivirus on it, plug in the phone jack, fire up an internet account and away they go.
Then they installed some "free" program. It installed spyway/malware/hijackware on their system. They have 20 processes in the background that they do not even know is running. The machine is crawling along, and then their 90 days of anti-virus updates ends. Now a month later, the next big virus is out, they are using outlook express (with default) settings. Now they have at least one virus on their system.
The person of average intelligence who does not spend several hours a month keeping up on firewall, antivirus, malware, adware and other security/performace issues, will soon have a constantly rebooting, locks often, won't shut down box.
Not a blue screen, but just about the same thing, The big lie microsoft has always told, just plug a computer in with windows and start working, everthing will work find and stay working fine.
And I don't even have to pay for the hardware, or the network feed, or the power, or... terrific uptime.
Do you know what happens when you run several apps with an appetite for memory? You get random reboots. I remember back in the day when I ran notepad, IE 4, Opera 4.0, and Netscape 4.0 with Apache and had constant reboots.
Running multiple network type services like domain, ftp, web, irc, print, login, etc on one windows box is not really a good idea. The performance leaves a little to be desired.
You might want to be easy on the guy. I did administration work for a company with 2 servers, 20 desktop systems and 10 laptops.
Now mind you, I had to do things there way. People were allowed to install whatever software they wanted, laptops could be out of office for up to 30 days at a time. Some users used the inoffice dsl, others used a local ISP or AOL, machines could be on either of 2 in office networks. People were allowed to pick their favorite version of windows and favorite verision of offfice to run.
Now, you try to implement a sane security policy. Keeping in mind any time you tightened up security and one person whined, the buck would stop there.
I did the best I could, and was allowed to train folks to keep all documents and such on the server (which I kept backup up and patched as best as possible).
Depending on a companies policy about computers and software 8 window systems can be more than a handful, or 50 systems can by easy to maintain.
Yes, Mandrake took the risk, they use XFree. And the license was fine for XFree 4.3
Now the license has changed for 4.4, they are sticking with XFree 4.3. They have made their own bed, they will sleep in it.
If the XFree 4.4 license is really an issue, then some GPL xfree replacment will mature at a rapid pace while the distributions stick with XFree 4.3.
Mind you I like XFree 4.3, however, if I had to go back to XFree 3.3, I could live with it. I am sure there will be no problem living with XFree 4.3 and the necessary workarounds for new hardware till a suitable replacement is availble...assuming one is actually needed.
In this context crappy software means crappy from a security standpoint.
No one is hacking windows with NERO (a great product). No one is hacking Linux with xroast, or cdbakeoven or cdrecord.
No one is hacking a Linux or Windows box with Java. However, Windows boxes are being hacked with ActiveX.
Why, because by the above definition of crappy software, Nero, Java, cdbakeoven, xroast and cdrecord are not crappy software. Whereas ActiveX,Outlook, IISS, Exchange Server, and Internet Explorer are crappy (read insecure) software.
When Linux takes over the destop, people will be running an operating system where they are not loged in as root, and the OS was designed to operate in a networked environment with ease of use grafted in on top. Instead of a single user non networked OS with ease of use and lock-in as the main design goal with networking and security grafted in on top.
There are 3 times as many instances of Apache out there as Microsoft IISS, yet IISS is hacked more.
Why? Because there are more instances of IISS?
No.
IISS is inherently less secure because it is intergrated into and built on top of a singler user non networked, non secure operating system.
All OS security holes belong to IISS, all scripting holes belong to IISS, all intergrated applications holes such as Office, Outlook, Explorer, and Active X belong to ISS. Why? Because a security hole in almost any easy to use Microsoft Intergrated product creates directly or indectly a hole in IISS that can be exploited.
While a hole in sendmail does not automaticaly equate a way to hack Apache
You should try Linux Defender Live. Which is a modified Knoppix 3.3 distribution put out by BitDefender. A company that makes an anti-virus/firewall product.
They have modified Knoppix to be able to load r/w ntfs drivers. You have to mount the hard drive and scan for the necessary dll's, then they are loaded and the drive remounted r/w.
It is not a lot of work to remaster the CD with those dll's on the CD, then all you need to do, is boot, scan the CD for the files (very quick) and mount your ntfs drives.
Any day of the week, I would rather rebuild from scratch some files in/etc that got fscked than try and fix a corrupted Windows Registry.
I don't care how knowledgeble the Microsoft community is. There is no one out there who can rebuild the registry from scratch. However, on linux it is possible to rebuild/etc from scratch
I guess what I am saysing is if all of your binaries are 100% ok, and some of your configuration information gets hosed, there is always a possibility to fix it in linux (and a comunity that will help with it) whereas with Billy Boy's beast, there is no one who can fix a sufficently corrupted registry.
Remember, it is Federal Law in Canada that Radio Stations must play Canadian artists 40% of the time. So they are always desperate for Canadian Artists to play.
I realize that just fine. It's not a doom and gloom scenario, just a very strange one. Something of immense dollar value is replaced by something of no dollar value. The value to society is still provided (the service of the software) and the money can and will move to another place, but the outlook for an economy might not be so rosy, even to the extreme that it could cause a strange panic and real damage.
It depends on what someone does with their money. If they buy something where the money goes out of the country, and the other country does not put the money back into our country. Then that can be bad.
But of course it does not matter what country you are, if you live outside of the US, the money leaves the country for Microsoft. If you are inside the US, then Microsoft, just puts it in their 40 billion dollar war chest, and it leaves the economy anyways.
As I recall, Microsoft is setting on enough money they could buy every airline in the United States. Tell me that someone sitting on that kind of money is NOT hurting the economy. Both in the US and world wide.
As long as everyone getting OpenOffice does not take the money they saved and put it in the bank and sit on it for 20 years, its ok.
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I don't know of anyone alive who can rebuild the registry from scratch, Mirosoft does not even understand it well enough to be able to rebuild it.
That is not a good sign, when the people who make it, can not fix it.
I would just tremble at the thought of telling someone to type "kdesu kate" and having them browse to /etc and opeing up a file and make a chage with me.
I have had to tell a windows loser that they were out of luck if they could not come up with a boot disk so we could get back into their box in DOS mode and restore the registry, since they deleted HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software or some other such nonsence, even though I asked them, are you sure the key name you are on is "x"
I would bet the system comes with a linux CD you could boot from and walk someone through with VI, instead of some lame ass recovery CD, that only gives them the option of nuking and paving their current system without saving any of their data.
I actually look forward to the day of providing lunux support.
As long as you can crap out windows with one keystroke in regedit, Windows is just not ready for the desktop.
Since I am stooping to these references, lets add that running as root in linux will probably not mean more I-D-ten-T errors, since you will still have to mark a download as executable before it can bite you in the butt.
It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs." - Han Solo,
Bloody Pesant!
Meanwhile over in Windows Land, Joe sixpack can't even load the program because he has about 10% resources free because there are 30 items running in his tray...hmmm how did I get three copies of WeathreBug running? Not to mention spyware and mailware running in the background.
Yup, with the right hardware, and keeping Joes Sixpack off the internet and your windows box will run well. I just fear for the day when all the spyware gets ported to Linux and I have to clean that crap up for folks......
A script kidddy would need to get local access to the box to be able to run code that could exploit this. Not a worry.
Now if this was a windows exploit, since your average user runs as administrator, then yes, script kiddies of the world would by rejoicing.
In Linux, peer review found it, fixed it and made the information available, so you know that you have an exploit.
Linux seems much more Mainstream to me. Until people write perfect, bug free, secure software, give me a system that at least I can keep up to date and have a chance to protect myself.
Then you had to add to that, run Ad-Away to get rid of spyware.
Then about a year ago, malware is added to the spyware category, it got so bad, you have to run something like SpywareBlaster to keep the stuff from installing in the first place.
Then about 6 months ago, hijackware started doing it's thing, and you needed another set of tools to protect against that..
Six months to a year from now, there will be some new class of crap out there screwing up my customers machines, and the tools to repair/prevent it from happening do not even exist yet.
It is not like putting oil in a car. Unless you consider having an oil leak so you must constantly check.
Let's not even begin to talk Anti-Virus, I can not tell you how much fun it is to have a customer with an up-to-date copy Norton Antivirus. On Monday, the computer is a little sluggish, on Tuedsay, the speaker beeped randomly in the morning, they call me on Wednesday. Sure enough, it is a new virus.
Per Symantec (Norton) the virus delivered it's payload on Tuesday (the beeping) and Norton's definitions can repair/prevent this as of Wednesday. I.E. the day AFTER the payload is delivered. If the payload would have deleted files, it would have been a problem.
So even updating your Antivirus software may not be enough. Although I do have to admit, they should have known better than to open up that email attachment.....
Go tell that to the people of Brazil where they are starting to catch on to what running Microsoft software really means.
In the OpenSource world, if something is broke by an upgrade, you have the source available and someone, someplace (paid or unpaid), can fix it, so you can compile it yourself.
PITA? Sure, but it is possilbe.
On the other hand, most software in the windows environment, is closed source, and if you relay on an app made by a company that went out of business, your are out of luck. If you don't want to pay for a bunch of upgrades, your out of luck. If the new version dropped some feature you rely upon, or forces you to rewrite hundreds of scripts, your out of luck.
So with open source, there is the potential that can compensate for software you run being made incompatible.
With Windows, hearing just hearing that some things may become incompatible means you know that if program (x) is borked, you have no way to continue running it, because it is possible you will have no access to source, or vendor you can fix it.
Well if you go on over to pcLinuxOnline TexStar has his own LiveCD of Mandrake 9.2. It can be installed to the Hard Drive and he has a package repository that uses apt-get.
Then they installed some "free" program. It installed spyway/malware/hijackware on their system. They have 20 processes in the background that they do not even know is running. The machine is crawling along, and then their 90 days of anti-virus updates ends. Now a month later, the next big virus is out, they are using outlook express (with default) settings. Now they have at least one virus on their system.
The person of average intelligence who does not spend several hours a month keeping up on firewall, antivirus, malware, adware and other security/performace issues, will soon have a constantly rebooting, locks often, won't shut down box.
Not a blue screen, but just about the same thing, The big lie microsoft has always told, just plug a computer in with windows and start working, everthing will work find and stay working fine.
Do you know what happens when you run several apps with an appetite for memory? You get random reboots. I remember back in the day when I ran notepad, IE 4, Opera 4.0, and Netscape 4.0 with Apache and had constant reboots.
Running multiple network type services like domain, ftp, web, irc, print, login, etc on one windows box is not really a good idea. The performance leaves a little to be desired.
Now mind you, I had to do things there way. People were allowed to install whatever software they wanted, laptops could be out of office for up to 30 days at a time. Some users used the inoffice dsl, others used a local ISP or AOL, machines could be on either of 2 in office networks. People were allowed to pick their favorite version of windows and favorite verision of offfice to run.
Now, you try to implement a sane security policy. Keeping in mind any time you tightened up security and one person whined, the buck would stop there.
I did the best I could, and was allowed to train folks to keep all documents and such on the server (which I kept backup up and patched as best as possible).
Depending on a companies policy about computers and software 8 window systems can be more than a handful, or 50 systems can by easy to maintain.
Now the license has changed for 4.4, they are sticking with XFree 4.3. They have made their own bed, they will sleep in it.
If the XFree 4.4 license is really an issue, then some GPL xfree replacment will mature at a rapid pace while the distributions stick with XFree 4.3.
Mind you I like XFree 4.3, however, if I had to go back to XFree 3.3, I could live with it. I am sure there will be no problem living with XFree 4.3 and the necessary workarounds for new hardware till a suitable replacement is availble...assuming one is actually needed.
No one is hacking windows with NERO (a great product). No one is hacking Linux with xroast, or cdbakeoven or cdrecord.
No one is hacking a Linux or Windows box with Java. However, Windows boxes are being hacked with ActiveX.
Why, because by the above definition of crappy software, Nero, Java, cdbakeoven, xroast and cdrecord are not crappy software. Whereas ActiveX ,Outlook, IISS, Exchange Server, and Internet Explorer are crappy (read insecure) software.
There are 3 times as many instances of Apache out there as Microsoft IISS, yet IISS is hacked more.
Why? Because there are more instances of IISS?
No.
IISS is inherently less secure because it is intergrated into and built on top of a singler user non networked, non secure operating system.
All OS security holes belong to IISS, all scripting holes belong to IISS, all intergrated applications holes such as Office, Outlook, Explorer, and Active X belong to ISS. Why? Because a security hole in almost any easy to use Microsoft Intergrated product creates directly or indectly a hole in IISS that can be exploited.
While a hole in sendmail does not automaticaly equate a way to hack Apache
- TRS-80
- Tandy Color Computer
- Commodore PET
- Commodore VIC-20
- Commodore-64
- Timex Sinclar
- Texas Instruments TI-99
- Atari-16
- Apple-II
I had even used CP/M before doing any DOS.The big thing Microsoft/IBM did for me was allow employers to have the need to hire people who could operate computers.
They have modified Knoppix to be able to load r/w ntfs drivers. You have to mount the hard drive and scan for the necessary dll's, then they are loaded and the drive remounted r/w.
It is not a lot of work to remaster the CD with those dll's on the CD, then all you need to do, is boot, scan the CD for the files (very quick) and mount your ntfs drives.
Any day of the week, I would rather rebuild from scratch some files in /etc that got fscked than try and fix a corrupted Windows Registry.
I don't care how knowledgeble the Microsoft community is. There is no one out there who can rebuild the registry from scratch. However, on linux it is possible to rebuild /etc from scratch
I guess what I am saysing is if all of your binaries are 100% ok, and some of your configuration information gets hosed, there is always a possibility to fix it in linux (and a comunity that will help with it) whereas with Billy Boy's beast, there is no one who can fix a sufficently corrupted registry.
- On the menu go to Knoppix -> Root Terminal
- type qtparted and press Enter
If someone can use Partition Magic, they should be comfortable with QTParted, it even resizes NTFS.This should prove to be interesting.....
It depends on what someone does with their money. If they buy something where the money goes out of the country, and the other country does not put the money back into our country. Then that can be bad.
But of course it does not matter what country you are, if you live outside of the US, the money leaves the country for Microsoft. If you are inside the US, then Microsoft, just puts it in their 40 billion dollar war chest, and it leaves the economy anyways.
As I recall, Microsoft is setting on enough money they could buy every airline in the United States. Tell me that someone sitting on that kind of money is NOT hurting the economy. Both in the US and world wide.
As long as everyone getting OpenOffice does not take the money they saved and put it in the bank and sit on it for 20 years, its ok.